


counting bodies like sheep to the new world order

by chiaroscure



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angel & Vessel Interactions (Supernatural), Gen, John is dead Mary's not, Mary!Lucifer, Vessel Fic, brief Mary/Ruby, brief Sam!Lucifer, child!Sam and child!Dean, meditations on monstrous motherhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 10:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28936926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiaroscure/pseuds/chiaroscure
Summary: With measured steps, the woman in white approaches the crib. A drip of the demon’s blood has landed on the infant's cheek; she swipes it stiffly away with her thumb and quirks her head when he looks up at her.“Shh,” she hushes, eerie and soothing at once, and his crying slows. “Go back to sleep.”*AU: Mary opens Lucifer's Cage a generation early.
Relationships: Lucifer & Mary Winchester, Lucifer & Sam Winchester, Mary Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	counting bodies like sheep to the new world order

At long last, Mary is out. For a few shining years, she escapes her life of hunting. She replaces monsters and demons with John, then with John and Dean, and then with John, Dean, and Sam. It’s like a dream. She almost can’t believe it’s real.

When John dies, not long after Sam is born, Mary knows what happened to him. The signs aren’t hard to recognize. She should have known that yellow-eyed demon wouldn’t keep its word when she made that deal years ago.

Revenge is all that makes sense to her after that, although of course it doesn’t _actually_ make sense. Revenge for a hunter rarely does. Nothing is going to bring him back, but what else is she supposed to do? All she can see is a haze of red, thick enough to blot out her children as she searches for the light to break through the fog. 

So, the boys go to Ellen, and Mary goes back to hunting.

Demons are easier to find than they were the last time she did this kind of work, which would be a blessing if not for how troubling it is. She stalks them, captures them, interrogates them, searching for the trail of the yellow-eyed one that stole so much of her family from her.

She meets Ruby. Ruby is a demon, but she volunteers to help without being threatened, so Mary begrudgingly lowers her weapons. Then, she reluctantly lets Ruby climb into the passenger seat of the Impala that used to be John’s, because Ruby said she knows how to find the demon. _Azazel_. She listens as Ruby tells her about what happened to John, about Lilith, about the seals. The disaster Mary will have unknowingly unleashed on the world with that damned deal if she doesn’t kill Lilith to stop it.

Ruby is helpful. She’s helpful, and brutal, and her lips are hot when they curl around the pretty lies about getting her life back that she whispers in Mary’s ear. Mary licks the blood off Ruby’s stolen skin all too eagerly, and learns to hurt demons with her mind, to twist them to her will, and finally to kill them. 

She kills Lilith, and Ruby screams her victory as the room erupts in light. Mary screams too, because she knows she really messed up this time, and because there isn’t anything else she _can_ do. 

And then she isn’t in the room anymore, and she’s fine, and the world doesn’t look like it’s over. 

She searches for signs of the things happening that Ruby told her to expect, but there’s nothing. No hellish beast wreaking havoc, no rains made of blood, no war or famine or pestilence. Things don’t even go eerily quiet, like the calm before the storm.

Mary waits for a few weeks, picking off the odd demon here or there. 

When nothing changes, she decides to collect Dean and Sam from Ellen and go back to Kansas.

So now, here she is. Home again.

*

It’s hard in Lawrence without John, but it’s never quiet with a five-year-old and a baby, so Mary cautiously tries to go back to normal. She still keeps an eye out for anything strange, but there’s nothing. A week passes, then two, then three — enough time for her to begin to convince herself that things might actually be alright for now.

And then, late at night, when she’s downstairs after trying and failing to sleep for hours, she hears footsteps on the floor above her, where Sam’s room is. 

Her blood runs cold.

She takes off for the stairs. She doesn't know what she’s going to do; she can’t do anything without weapons anymore, and she doesn’t have any on hand. She can smell the sulfur; she knows it’s a demon; she knows it’s the yellow-eyed demon before she even gets to the first step. It’s stupid to rush in with nothing, but she doesn’t have time to think; she’ll offer it herself if she has to —

But she’s not even at the landing yet when a power that does not feel in any way demonic makes a promise directly to her heart: _I can save your child, if you’ll just let me in_.

“ _Yes, anything_ ,” she sobs, not bothering to ask it what that means, or what it wants, or even if it has a name.

*

The woman in white enters the child’s bedroom, where the demon leans over the crib, a knife coated in his own blood in his hand. Light glints off his yellow eyes and he grins at her, too self-satisfied to register her cool expression that does not match the tears on her cheeks. 

“Great to see you again, Mary,” he mock-whispers. 

Then, he’s dead on the floor.

With measured steps she approaches the crib, stepping over the fallen body to peer at the crying baby. A drip of the demon’s blood has landed on his cheek; she swipes it stiffly away with her thumb and quirks her head when he looks up at her.

“Shh,” she hushes, eerie and soothing at once, and his crying slows. “Sam. Go back to sleep.”

*

When Mary wakes up, it’s morning, and she’s in her bed. Sam and Dean are safe, and the demon’s body is gone from Sam’s room. She remembers the terror, the sulfur, the stairs, the offer. Somehow, she knows that the yellow-eyed demon is dead, and she knows there’s something foreign and strange in her head with her now. 

She knows that it’s there, but nothing else about it.

*

Most of the time, she’s Mary. She's Mary, conscious and in the driver's seat of her own body, but the thing that saved Sam never leaves. She hunts, because she can't give up the demon blood — her skin starts to burn away when she goes too long without it; she starts to lose her grip on her own mind. So, she comes to specialize in killing the ever-growing number of demons making their way into the world. There still aren’t many, so she has to move around a lot. She brings her sons with her, teaches them about her life. She hates that she does, but she has no other choice. What else could she do with them? 

She does her best. It's not what she wanted for them or for herself, but it’s what she has, and it's okay. Even having the incomprehensible, indescribable Thing just barely curled at the back of her consciousness is okay, because while It's heavy and strange and cold and uncomfortable, she knows It doesn't mean her family any harm. It even seems to like them, maybe, in a strange, foreign way she doesn’t understand. So, when It sometimes extends tendrils of Itself curiously into her fingertips as she pats Dean on the back or fixes Sam's hair, she ignores it, because never once have her reflexes been too slow to defend them, and she knows she has It to thank for that.

She worries about Sam. She knows the yellow-eyed demon did something to him; she knows that _he_ can tell that there's something a little bit different about him. Dean has his own difficulties; in some ways he seems more different than Sam, but the demon blood in Mary’s veins recognizes something about Sam that's just...off. Not quite human. She wonders if she should be afraid _for_ him or _of_ him — or maybe both — and that's unsettling. But the fierce protectiveness that flares in her when she starts thinking about that too much isn't just her own, and she has grown to trust the Thing riding silently with her through the years, so she thinks Sam must be okay. She doesn't think anything will happen to him. She doesn't think the Thing will _let_ anything happen to him.

She worries about Dean too. She worries about the strange mixture of affection and danger that bleeds from the Thing into her own mind when she looks at him sometimes. The feeling isn’t hers; she knows it's not hers, but it's hard to tell sometimes, especially as Dean gets older and grows more and more into himself. She doesn't think the Thing will do anything, but she's also not sure she could stop It if the danger ever overtook the affection. She doesn't understand it, and she tries not to think about it. She doesn't expect she would get answers, if she tried to ask.

*

Years pass. Dean starts high school. Then, after a couple more years, he starts to think about dropping out. Doesn’t see the point, he says; he’s a hunter, and school is far from his priority. Mary tells him to stick to it; tries to figure out how to keep them in one place for long enough for them to settle in properly, at least for a year or two. Long enough for Dean to get through. 

It feels stupid; she doesn’t have a plan for how to make this work, but she leases a place for a year and moves them in. She gets a job, even though that feels stupid too. She knows she can't go more than a few weeks without demon blood before she starts to come apart at the seams, but she figures maybe she can make it work somehow. Sam and Dean are old enough to stay by themselves for a pretty long time now, if it ever comes to that.

It's normal for a while. Sam's doing great in school. Doesn't have many friends, but his teachers love him. Dean's scraping by, but he stops ditching class, stops talking about dropping out. Mary's job is rough, although technically it’s easier than hunting; she's just not used to steady work like this. But it's nice to get paid for work that doesn’t involve any of the horrors they're all used to.

Then, she starts to lose time.

The first time it happens, she's starting to itch for blood. It’s been more than a month since she's had any, and she's trying to put it off a little longer, but she's not sure how much longer she can go. She can feel her skin starting to peel. Her insides feel like she ate dry ice. Her mind feels raw and cold-burned. But she’s busy, and her sons need her, so she hangs on.

The time skip is only a few hours, at night. She wouldn't have even noticed if she wasn't up late tracking demonic signs nearby, after the boys went to bed. It's 1 AM, then suddenly it's 6 AM, and she has no idea where the hours went but she feels oddly winded when she comes to at the kitchen table, the sulfuric, ferric taste of demon blood on her tongue with no clue to indicate how it got there.

She wouldn't mind the skips if they weren't so jarring, because they mean she never has to go anywhere on purpose to get the blood she needs. Her body starts demanding it; she blacks out; and a few hours later she's set for another few weeks. It only ever happens at night, and she always comes-to in the apartment where everything’s fine, including her. 

But she doesn't like not knowing what she does while she's gone. She has seen people possessed by demons; she knows that's not what's happening to her, but she can see some similarities. The Thing calms her, assures her in Its wordless way that this isn't like a demonic possession. She believes It, but she still wishes she knew what was happening — what she was doing, during the blackouts. She's glad there's always the sensory feedback that she has been out getting the blood she needs, because as long as it's that, then she can fill in the blanks well enough.

*

She loses a little under an hour during the day for the first time one weekend, and there are no cues to tell her that she's been out chasing demons. As far as she can tell, Sam and Dean haven't noticed that she's been gone. She comes back into her awareness when she's alone in the living room of the apartment, and Sam comes in and greets her (he must have just gotten out of school, she guesses, based on the time on the clock), but she can’t remember. She tries not to show her disorientation, but she can tell Sam notices something — but he doesn't mention it.

That starts happening more without any clear reason. Sometimes it seems like Sam or Dean noticed something was a little bit strange about her while she was gone from herself, but sometimes not. She wishes she knew what was happening, but so far nothing has gone wrong, and she doesn't know how to stop it, so she just carries on like everything is alright. And maybe it is. Either way, she doesn’t want to worry them.

*

Dean graduates, and she's so proud of him. He decides to take off to work for Bobby for a while, just to stretch his wings a little. That's fine, in Mary's opinion; it'll probably be good for him to learn some stuff about things that go bump in the night outside of her own specialty, and to get a chance to make some of his own money honestly with someone who _gets_ it. Sam starts tenth grade, and Mary thinks it's kind of nice to get to spend some time just the two of them, since Sam's always been the easier child but harder to read. 

It _is_ nice, but she starts losing more and more time, and eventually whenever she talks to him he spends the first few words assessing her, like she might be someone else. He never seems _unhappy_ about who she might be either way, though, so as much as it's unsettling, she supposes it's probably okay.

One day, she overhears Sam on the phone with Dean. She shouldn't snoop, but she can tell they're talking about her, so she lingers in the hallway for just a second. 

"She's good," Sam says. "You should call her more." A pause, then, "no, I think she's fine. Not any more than usual." 

He's clearly talking about the blackouts. So, Dean and Sam have noticed enough to talk about it with each other. Part of her is glad they _can_ talk to each other about it, but part of her is sad that they have to. And part of her is confused, because she knows the daytime blackouts have been more frequent since Dean left, and she knows that Sam can tell, so she doesn't know why he's lying to Dean that it's no more than usual.

*

She doesn't like it when Dean starts hunting with Ellen's husband, but she's not going to stop him. He seems to like his new between-jobs job at the bar; he seems to like spending time with Ash and Jo. It's not what she wanted for him, but he seems as safe as anybody _can_ be in the business, and his situation is more stable than most hunters'. Most importantly, he seems happy, so she complains at first, but then lets him do what he feels he needs to do. 

Sam's still doing great in school, and she wonders what he's going to do when he finishes. He's in eleventh grade now; he has the grades and PSAT scores to get into a great college, if he wants to. She hopes he does. He _says_ he does. But there's something false about how he talks about his plans for the future, something uncertain in him that she can't quite make sense of, but it might just be nerves, so she leaves it alone.

One night, Sam is in his room doing homework on his bed and Mary goes in. She has gotten used to the feeling of being evaluated during the first few seconds of every interaction with him; it doesn’t bother her anymore. He smiles, and gestures for her to sit next to him, so she does. They chat for a few minutes, but she starts hinting at her amorphous concerns for him. She tries to ignore the tingling at the back of her head the more she presses, the more Sam avoids eye contact. She ignores the way her palm _burns_ when she puts her hand on his shoulder to reassure him that she's here for him no matter what. 

She starts to put that sentiment to words, but as she speaks she has the new, unshakable feeling that the words aren't really hers. They all _sound_ like things she would say, they’re pouring out of her mouth in her own voice, but she’s not saying them _on purpose_ , and unlike a second ago Sam isn't breaking eye contact even to blink now, and it's all safe and comfortable but she knows it isn't _normal_.

She doesn't lose any time that night, but when her legs carry her out of Sam's bedroom, she steers herself into the bathroom and closes the door. 

"What's going on?" she asks the mirror. 

For a moment her reflection isn't hers, but only for a moment. She receives no further answer.

*

These little slips just happen sometimes, after that. They’re hardly even noticeable: her words always sound like they could plausibly be things she would say; her actions always seem like they could plausibly be things she would do. After the fact, she always feels like they’re things she _meant_ to say, things she _meant_ to do, that the Thing just...did for her, before she got around to it. 

The slips are strange but she likes them better than the blackouts. She likes to know what she’s up to, when the Thing takes charge. She doesn’t like the feeling that she’s missing out on her own life, but mostly she doesn’t like not knowing what It was doing while she was absent. She doesn’t like not knowing how It behaves, how noticeable it is that It’s not her. She doesn’t like her sons having memories of her that she doesn’t share. So, the slips are a nice change.

She gets the impression that the Thing can tell that she prefers to know what's going on — even gets the impression that it somehow _approves_ of this preference, like It thinks more highly of her for caring. It takes over for hours sometimes, but for only seconds other times. Sometimes It doesn't take over at all, It just winds itself through her nerves or eyes or ears to share her sensory experience while she pilots her ( _their?_ ) body. Mostly It does this when she's interacting with Sam, and she would worry about that, but It has been nothing but good to him. She would almost describe it as _shy_ with him sometimes, tentative about reaching Itself into her fingertips when she pats him on the cheek to say goodnight, like It's not sure It's allowed to touch him.

But sometimes It spills into her nerves when she’s alone, too. It picks strange moments to drop in on her when she's by herself — when she’s stretching her arms over her head after waking up, when she’s combing her hair, or half-dancing to a song that comes on the radio while making dinner — like It's just interested in feeling the fluid push and pull of her muscles. Sometimes she indulges in those moments a little longer than she otherwise might for the Thing’s benefit, just so she can feel Its curiosity about her as if she's doing something fascinating. 

“Do you like that?” she says to It casually one day, sensing Its presence as she's reaching up to put away dishes. She rarely addressed It directly, and when she does It never gives her a real response, but this time she gets something approaching a clear affirmation. She smiles to herself, and wonders idly if she could give the Thing partial control somehow. 

No sooner has she thought that then she has done it. Now, instead of orchestrating her motions herself, she’s guiding the Thing's movement of her body. It has pulled the strings on her limbs plenty of times, but she gets the impression that there's something different about how It's doing it now, like she's more of a hand puppet than a marionette. She also gets the impression that she could take back control if she wanted to at the moment — like they're now putting the dishes away _together_ in a way that she has never felt with the Thing before.

She can't tell if she's being studied, or if she's teaching, or if she’s found some type of camaraderie with the entity that has lived in her head for the last fifteen years. She doesn't know why this is happening now when it didn't before, but she finds she doesn't mind. She smoothes out the rigid inhumanity typical of Its motions, teaches It how to be more natural in Its use of her muscles. It learns quickly and eagerly from her, and she finds she’s happy to help.

So, she and the Thing start to share her consciousness more often. The blackouts still happen, but only at night. Only when she comes back to herself to the taste of demon blood. She doesn't mind. Sometimes she misses the thrill of it, the violence — but she feels like she shouldn't. It's just as well for the Thing to keep her blinded to that. She wonders if it's for her sake that she doesn't get to see, or for the sake of the Thing's privacy...she still knows so little about It, despite the weird intimacy that has developed between them. Whatever the reason, it's probably okay. Everything has been so far.

The only problem is that, the more often the Thing visits her consciousness, the more prominent the feeling of freezer burn inside her bones becomes. She has to work hard to keep Sam from seeing the dark circles under her eyes, the way her skin looks too pale sometimes, patches of itching, painful redness on her cheekbones and forehead, on the backs of her hands, across her shoulder blades. She knows she can't keep it from him completely; he's observant, and he pays particular attention to her, but she can hide it enough that he never _asks._

The blackouts start happening more at night, too. The connection between her body's deterioration and lack of demon blood has been apparent for a long time, so it's not unexpected. She's glad the Thing is taking care of it, because she can't begrudge Its ever-growing presence in her life.

Sam gets into Stanford, and she's so proud of him. The Thing's pure, shining pride in him reflects from her own, though she can tell It doesn't completely understand why the achievement is important.

He graduates from high school, and Dean comes home to sit through the ceremony with her. Afterwards, they go out to eat at Sam's favorite place. Dean proclaims it his treat, and he all but glows with the admiration and fondness Sam tries to hide under a quirk of his eyebrow. _They turned out so well_ , she thinks, _even with everything I’ve put them through._

The Thing, watching but not participating, basks in the feeling of their family together, and comfortably agrees with her that yes, they did.

She stays up for a while after the boys go to bed. It's nice to have Dean's room occupied again. They left it the way it was when he left it so that he can come home whenever he wants and still have his place in their lives (and he does come home: not as often as she'd like, but as much as a mother of a young man like dean could reasonably ask him to). She's sitting at the kitchen table with her hands around a mug of tea despite the warm late Spring weather, not really thinking about anything, just indulging in her own contentment. She almost doesn't hear the latch unlock on Sam's window through the cracked open door, but her hunter's reflexes tell her to pay attention.

She knows she has the juice at least to hurt whatever she might find in there without taking a weapon, thanks to all the demon blood she knows the Thing has been drinking for her, so she doesn't waste time on her way toward Sam's door. Peering through, she sees not one but four shadows radiating evil, and for a moment she’s paralyzed in a flashback to the yellow-eyed demon standing over Sam’s crib, her mind stuck uselessly on _no no nononono_.

The shadows notice her, turning toward her with cruel smirks. She raises her hand to defend herself, but before she can do anything, a terrible power that isn't her own explodes through the room in a flash of blinding light from behind her eyes. 

The demons are dead; she knows without having to look. She looks at Sam instead; he should have woken up, but he just stirs sluggishly.

Mary doesn’t have time to react to that before she heads Dean’s footsteps quickly approaching from down the hall. His silhouette appears in the doorway; his eyes moving from her to Sam to the bodies on the floor as Sam starts to pull himself back into consciousness. She doesn’t know how she’s going to explain this to them when she barely understands what’s going on herself. She tries to speak, wrestles with her vocal cords, but they won’t obey the commands she’s sending to say something — anything.

Dean opens his mouth to say something, but the Thing is faster.

 _I’m sorry_ , a voice that is a mix of her own and of Sam’s says inside her head. Mary feels her fingers snap, and she’s gone.

*

A year passes. She's out for most of it. She's grateful for that; she knows whatever she would see if she was awake is not anything she wants to experience

She knows Sam and Dean are safe, but she knows they haven't seen her or the Thing since she disappeared from Sam's bedroom the night of his graduation.

Sometimes the Thing pulls her out of the sleep It keeps her in. It does this when they are alone, when nothing is going on. She wakes up in unfamiliar rooms looking out windows, or holding a comb, or sitting at a table with a full mug of hot tea they don't drink between her hands. The Thing lets her move her limbs if she wants to. Talks to her a bit, always in that voice that is a cross between hers and Sam's, asks her if she needs anything ( _does she prefer empty sleep or would she like dreams?_ ), comforts her quietly. 

She could ask It questions; sometimes she thinks It wishes she would, but she doesn't. The first question she would ask would be what her children are doing: if Sam started at Stanford, if Dean is still working at the bar, if they're doing okay. She doesn't think she'll like the answers to those questions, though, so she doesn't bother asking. Nothing else she might ask feels very important in comparison.

*

Another year passes, and another. Not much changes. She can feel that things are happening, but It feels like It's still waiting. Still lurking. Like It is biding Its time while everything comes together, until...she doesn't know what.

Sam is safe, It tells her. Dean is safe. They're doing well. It sounds sad but proud, and she wants to ask, but she never does.

She asks for dreams. She gets them. John, her parents, Sam and Dean as children, Sam and Dean as she saw them last. Herself hunting, sometimes, when there's free-floating agitation in her brain. Ruby sometimes too, when the agitation is its most complex. 

Once, she dreams that Dean is gone. She tries to wake up for what feels like days, maybe weeks, but she can't — until suddenly he's back in a flash of light she doesn't recognize. She tries to call upon the Thing to share her excitement, but It ignores her. 

She starts getting hazy dreams of Sam, older than when she last saw him, no longer with that late adolescent awkwardness clinging to him. He is himself, but he also isn't. Half of Sam, but also twice himself. It's strange, but it's also _right_ somehow, and very, very familiar. He speaks but she can't make out his ( _his?_ ) words, and then the dream fades, and she floats away into nothingness

*

"We’ll see them again soon," the Thing tells her one day, unprompted. 

"Keep them safe," she replies. 

She feels It pull her face easily into a smile.

“We don't have to," It says. "They can manage that for themselves."

That answer wouldn't have made her feel better five years ago, but it does now.

*

She can feel the world changing. There are so many demons all the time. So much unrest. Reapers, which she only ever met one of before, are suddenly everywhere. One day she is aware that angels exist, and that several of them walk the earth. That should surprise her, but it fits. 

She's starting to suspect. She wants to ask, but she doesn't.

Once, in a dream about a cherubic figurine she set over Dean's crib when he was a baby, she calls quietly to the Thing. She's casual, half-joking, as she holds the so-called guardian angel and thinks of the Thing in her head. She doesn't expect a response, but she gets a confusing shockwave of appreciation and protectiveness and guilt. The dream washes out before its natural end, and when she wakes up again, she doesn't mention it.

*

Horrors happen around her. She doesn’t see them, but she knows; she senses it. Her hands have been used to kill more than monsters, and though she’s not the one doing the killing she still carries the blame. Better her than someone else; she’s been guilty since her very first hunt; there’s not much left to ruin in her. She aches with the half-knowledge of what she’s helping to do anyway.

But it could be worse. It _will_ be. She knows this is just the beginning. 

The Thing is getting more restless by the day. It wants her awake more often, wants to talk to her. The topics It brings up seem mundane, but she can sense the weight of so much more that she doesn't understand behind every little comment and question the Thing voices. Sometimes It digs at her for answers she can't give to questions It won't ask, but It always lets her slip back into unconsciousness if she doesn't want to speak to It. Often, though, she agrees to talk with It for long stretches at a time, not sure if what she's doing is right, but certain that it's important, whatever it is. 

She never lies to It. She’s not sure she even _could_ , since It’s in her head, but she never tries. It never lies to her, so she never lies to It. That feels like it matters, but she couldn’t say why.

*

One night, without warning, she's herself again. Really herself, but younger, like she's gone back in time. John is alive, looks like he did before they were even married, but he's not himself like Mary is herself all of a sudden, and he's talking to Dean, who looks almost ten years older than when Mary last saw him, in the dining room of her childhood home. It’s nonsense, but it’s real; she can tell that it’s absolutely real. 

She can't hear what they're saying as she watches from the shadows in the doorway, trying to make sense of what is happening. She shifts her weight and the floorboard creaks and John-who-isn't-John turns to look at her. There's recognition in his eyes — but not recognition of _Mary_. A cold flare of feeling from the Thing inside her burns as It holds this other Thing's gaze for an impossibly long moment, and she thinks maybe —

But then it's over, and she and her Thing are in the right year again.

*

She knows the Thing is lonely. The more active It gets the meaner It acts, but the lonelier and sadder she knows It is. She tries to talk to It, but It doesn't want to tell her anything about that. She pushes a little but gets nowhere, so she stops trying.

One night, she dreams of an evening years ago, when Sam and Dean were kids, after she came back from a hunt that went longer than she was expecting. She sat on Sam's bed and sang him the lullaby she used to sing when he was a baby, stroking the hair off his forehead to reassure him that she’s here now. She's singing to Sam in the dream, but she's also singing to the Thing, and she knows It's letting her, because Sam’s forehead is colder than his skin ever has been against her fingertips.

*

She knows this is the end of the world. She knows her sons are in the middle of it. She knows they have an angel with them, because the Thing told her one day that they do. She has known for a while that the Thing is an angel too, and while she doesn't _know_ which angel It is, she has a pretty good guess. She thinks she should probably be more bothered by that than she is, but It is nothing like she would have expected It to be, if It had told her Its name when It first came to her. 

There's something oddly reassuring about the internal conflict she knows It carries with It, that grows stronger the longer this drags out.

*

She is asleep, as she so often is, but then suddenly she’s awake and she's face-to-face with Sam, and she doesn't know what to do. She knows he's not talking to her when he spits the word " _you_ " at her, but it stings as if he is. 

He would be justified if he was, probably.

Regardless of who he’s talking to, though, there’s a lack of commitment to the disgust in his tone. Mary remembers how he used to look at her when he was a teenager and he knew that he was talking to the Thing instead of her, how he was never afraid of It, how he seemed to feel absolutely at home with It. The Thing can see his hesitation too, and inside her head It's electric with Its own elation at being near him again, at not being wholly reviled — but It contains Its excitement, plays calm, moves Mary’s face into a delicate smile and softly says just, "Sam."

This happens again, then again, then again. Every time, Sam looks at them with mistrust and anger and betrayal, but each time all of that wears down further into something more natural. Something that looks a lot like comfort.

She meets Dean only once like this, which is probably for the best. His expression is so broken when he sees the Thing that looks like her that she can hardly stand it. Dean understands a lot of things better than either Mary or Sam, but this isn't one of them. She wonders later if it will be harder or easier for him to stomach, afterwards, when...when…

She doesn’t know how to finish the thought.

"Is she still there?" Sam asks the Thing one day, hesitantly, like he's not sure he wants to know the answer. But he asks It questions as Mary never lets herself ask It questions, and she's proud of him for that.

"She is," her own voice tells him, and he looks so relieved — then so righteously angry on her behalf that Mary almost wishes the Thing had lied.

 _It's okay Sam, I'm okay_ , she wants to tell him. He looks startled, and only a split second later does it register that she actually said those words aloud: the Thing has dropped back so she can reassure him herself that she's still there, that she's not suffering, that he doesn't need to be angry for her. He looks like he might cry. Mary’s tears streak down her face for a few seconds before the Thing puts Itself back in charge. 

This is the first time she has seen Sam look at the Thing (or at her) with trust since he was in high school. She's not sure if that's good or bad; it's just such a relief to see that openness in him again.

*

She's standing at a window, as she has been so many times before. She's not alone; there are demons around her, and she hears footsteps on the stairs. She's not in control, but she knows this must be important because usually she doesn't get dragged up for day-to-day activities anymore. 

She knows the footsteps are Sam and Dean’s even before they speak. She wants to turn around, but the Thing keeps their eyes locked on the window, breathing frost onto it and drawing a little trident with their fingertip.

She feels the sulfuric heat radiating off of Sam without having to look at him; she knows the burn of demon blood he is feeling because that has been a constant for her for Sam's entire life. She wants to grieve for him, that he has fallen into this trap too, but there's no time for that now. The Thing turns so she can see them, and there they are, her boys, Sam vibrating with the blood and Dean looking scared and lost and protective of his brother to the end. The Thing smiles, but the smile feels like Mary's too.

Sam closes his eyes and every demon in the room drops. The Thing is surprised and not surprised, and every bit as impressed as Mary is behind Its eyes. Sam and the Thing talk, and Mary doesn't really understand what they're talking about — too many ‘yesses’ from Sam without questions or context, too much searing submission that the Thing won't accept. Mary doesn’t understand the negotiation or why what’s being said matters, but she understands what has changed when Sam says "yes" again, defiant still but certain and trusting too now, and the Thing finally takes him at his word.

The light is coming from inside her, so she can't block it out when she squeezes her eyes shut. 

She feels herself falling, and then she doesn’t feel anything. If she could think, she would guess she had died.

*

It might as well be eternity, but then she wakes up, and it doesn't seem like much time has passed at all. The first thing she notices is that she's alone — not in the room (she hasn't checked that yet), but alone in _herself_. For the first time in twenty-five years, Mary Winchester is the only one in her body, and the emptiness rings like deepest silence. She thinks she's crying, but she's not sure why.

She opens her eyes and sees Dean lying unconscious across the room. She prays he's alive, forces herself to watch for signs until she can make out that his chest is moving with his breath. _Thank you,_ she thinks, _thank you._

She struggles to sit up, but she doesn't have to struggle much; someone is helping her. Soon she's seated more or less comfortably, and when she looks, there is Sam, kneeling beside her with this deep, ancient, victorious air of serenity around him. It's Sam but it's not Sam; she can tell, but she doesn't mind. She pushes Sam’s hair back anyway as she used to do when he was little. It doesn’t respond like Sam did back then, but It accepts the gesture that she taught It from the other side just the same.

“Mary,” It — the Thing — the archangel Lucifer says, voice strange and full and _right_ in Sam’s mouth. “I’m so happy to meet you at last.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The idea of Mary!Lucifer has been living in my head rent free ( _haaa_ ) since I first watched Supernatural ages ago, and I finally got the motivation to do something with it :D
> 
> I also [painted her](https://sinaesthete.tumblr.com/post/640700579586473984/dont-fret-precious-im-herestep-away-from-the)! (Heads up, there's some blood in the image) 
> 
> Title = modified lyrics from A Perfect Circle's song "Pet"
> 
> Find me on tumblr @[sinaesthete](sinaesthete.tumblr.com)


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